Batavia school board puts full-day kindergarten plan on hold

Batavia School District 101 will not offer full-day kindergarten next school year, the Board of Education decided this week.

Board members unanimously voted Tuesday to table the controversial proposal until February, when it will be discussed as part of a long-range financial plan, said board President Cathy Dremel.

"While there's a great interest in full-day kindergarten, I do feel like we've got an incredibly great program with half-day kindergarten," she said. "We are in a financial tight spot, and I'm not comfortable with subsidizing daycare."

The proposal would offer full-day kindergarten classes at all district elementary schools. Enrollment would be unlimited, but parents who put their children in the full-day program would pay between $2,600 and $2,750 per year in extra tuition to cover the increased cost. While low-income families would get a waiver that would reduce that fee to $250 per year, the board would have to cut about $100,000 from the budget to pay for the waivers, said Chief Academic Officer Brad Newkirk. The district also wouldn't be able to set the exact fee before the kindergarten enrollment deadline, he said.

About a dozen parents spoke up against instituting a fee-based full-day kindergarten program, most citing concerns that the program might pull enough students from the half-day program that classes would have to be consolidated. That could force the district to bus some kindergarten students to schools outside of their neighborhoods, officials have said.

Parents are worried about having to pay for full-day kindergarten just to make sure their children will go to the neighborhood school, one mother said. "A lot of families that don't qualify for the [tuition fee] waiver would have a hard time paying the fees, but they don't want to make their 5-year-olds go to a different school than their older siblings do, then switch schools the next year," she said.

Batavia School District 101 could offer full-day kindergarten next fall, if officials can figure out how to pay for the optional, fee-based program.

Board of Education members have agreed to move forward with the proposal, thanks largely to many e-mails and phone calls from parents asking for a...

While board members still support the educational and social benefits of full-day kindergarten, they agreed that funding the program while maintaining the state-mandated half-day kindergarten program would create too many complications to manage without burdening families.

"I've always wanted to offer full-day kindergarten, but not if we have to make parents pay for it," board member Jon Gaspar said. "Right now it's too expensive to run both a full-day kindergarten and a half-day kindergarten, and the half-day program is required by law."

"I think we all agree that this proposal is a bad compromise between what we want and what we can afford," said Dremel.

Board members emphasized that they intend to revisit the proposal once they have a clearer picture of the district's revenue projections and state aid status.

"I don't want to throw away all the hard work we and the staff have put in on this, but I want to see us in a better financial situation before we try it. Finding the money now means cutting something else, which feels like we're just kicking the can down the road. We're not in the right position to serve our citizens the best way on this, so we should wait until we are in the right position," board Vice President Jason Stoop said.